KEYWORDS: Printing, 3D printing, Digital Light Processing, Digital micromirror devices, Control systems, Computer aided design, Control systems design, 3D modeling, Software development, Ultraviolet radiation
As 3D printer technology has rapidly developed and penetrated into a wide range of applications, several methods for creating 3D objects have been explored and developed. One such method utilizes UV curing of special resins, where the patterning of each layer of the 3D object is determined by a digital micromirror device (DMD) controlled by a digital light processing (DLP) system. This method possesses important advantages over other methods in terms of variable object composition, high spatial resolution, and reduced build times, but usually requires specialized knowledge to program and control the DMD and other printer systems. Not all potential users of 3D printers will be able or willing to acquire this knowledge in order to take full advantage of all that 3D printing has to offer in their ideas or applications. new software package called Design23DPrint has been developed that provides a user-friendly and intuitive interface for importing, manipulating, and editing 3D objects and has the ability to be readily interfaced with many different DLP and printer control systems. Both layer creation and the positioning of supports can be automated or be manually controlled. Integration of Design23DPrint with existing software packages for DMD control allows the user to edit layers on a pixel-by-pixel basis. The software was integrated with a new 3D printer design developed by Texas Instruments to demonstrate the capabilities of the software to control the printing process and to interface with resident control systems.
KEYWORDS: Mirrors, Optical signal processing, Digital signal processing, Signal processing, Digital Light Processing, Modulators, Reflectivity, Optical communications, Dense wavelength division multiplexing, Optical networks
We have developed an approach for processing communication signals in the optical domain using a DLP digital mirror array driven by a Digital Signal Processor (DSP). In optical communication systems, modulation rates of 10 GB/s and above are common, hence, direct processing of Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexed (DWDM) optical signals without undergoing Optical to Electrical conversion has become a key requirement for cost effective deployment of dynamic optical networks. This work will discuss primarily applications of Optical Signal Processing (OSP) to coherent DWDM signals. Optical Signal Processing has also found applications in spectroscopy, microscopy, sensing, optical correlation, and testing.
For the past five years, Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology from Texas Instruments has made significant inroads in the projection display market. With products encompassing the world's smallest data & video projectors, HDTVs, and digital cinema, DLP is an extremely flexible technology. At the heart of these display solutions is Texas Instruments Digital Micromirror Device (DMD), a semiconductor-based light switch array of thousands of individually addressable, tiltable, mirror-pixels. With success of the DMD as a spatial light modulator in the visible regime, the use of DLP technology under the constraints of coherent, infrared light for optical networking applications is being explored. As a coherent light modulator, the DMD device can be used in Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexed (DWDM) optical networks to dynamically manipulate and shape optical signals. This paper will present the fundamentals of using DLP with coherent wavefronts, discuss inherent advantages of the technology, and present several applications for DLP in dynamic optical networks.
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